A Mooseboy Manifesto

(aka "At Long
Last Love")

The Early Years

So,
it all started for me way back in 1977. I was
a child of (NOYDB)
when I got my first
guitar. Of course, I really wanted to play bass, but
my parents said I
needed to first show the discipline to learn on an
acoustic guitar
before they plunked down the money for an electric
bass and amp. I
did, a year later my black Fender Musicmaster was
mine, and the world
was never the same....

Anyway,
I
want to ramble on here about my influences, why I
make the sounds I
make, and what I hope is understood by my art.

So in my high school years, while my
contemporaries were either in
marching band or just "in a band", or whatever, I
was WORKING. I played
with a group
of guys who did standards, all the way from
the 40's to
the early 80's (seeing as it was the early 80's).
We closed every gig
with "After the Lovin' " WITH key change. Yeah, we
were that kinda
band, but we worked all the time. Originally we
were theTim Tew Three
(named for the drummer), but we added keys and
became the Tim Tew Four.
For a kid who couldn't even drive
yet, I made great money. No Atari
2600 game
cartridge was beyond my means. I upgraded the
Musicmaster to my darling
solid
Maple
American-made Fender Precision Bass and
upgraded amps. I
started my love affair with technology with first
the Commodore
VIC-20, then
the Atari
800 personal computers. Great money....

It was during this time that I came to appreciate
the standards and the
people who made them their own (even though 25
other artists likely
recorded the exact same song). This was also the
time I realized my
biggest problem with music: It's all the
same. Really. The vast
majority of music gets tied down into progressions
and at the end ofthe
day it's all I-IV-V or maybe I-VI-IV-V with slight
variations.
When I figured this out, some of the magic music
had for me left.

A Songwriter and Artist Emerges

Into
my college days, I started playing with some guys who
were not formally
trained, but enjoyed playing rock and stuff. We
had fun, and even wrote
a few originals. This is where I started writing
songs. We all worked
at the same Publix Supermarket and the songs I
wrote were mostly about
other people that worked at Publix. When
asked for a name, I
suggested Mooseboy
Alfonzo and
HisPrairie Troubadours, which we actually
used for a gig or two.
We eventually changed our name to The Bingers
(which was appropos) and
that was what we were known as.

Then my brother Mark (of the famed Circle Head
Man Series) got the
equipment to setup his own four-track
studio. We started
collaborating as Duck Mangler and
the
Radioactive Nuns, yours truly
filling in as Duck Mangler. Mark
is a natural musician, I'm more of an "artiste",
the music just being
means to arrive at the ends. We primarily ended up
with me thinking of
a song and writing lyrics, with Mark fleshing out
the music and doing
overall production. Our collaborations resulted in such
immortal classics as "If I Could Find a
Moosehead", "Sperm Bank
ATM","Oh Baby, You're Gonna Get Yours", and a few
others with titles
that are not meant for a family
audience. Tracks we did of
note, however, are "Bradley's Ramada", "The
Elks Lodge Dungeon
Reunion Party", and a remake of the Lorne
Greene
classic "Ringo".

Bradley's and Elks Lodge were variations on the
same theme, that it's
all the same. We basically picked a progression of
some kind and shoved
as many songs as we could into it. Elks Lodge also
introduced us to
sampling keyboards which were just becoming Casio
affordable. Ringo, on the other hand, was a
straight remake, but
done as a reggae number. I remember it was
pretty good, but the
we didn't spend enough time on the horns for my
liking, and it was
long. A song with six very wordy verses slowed
down to reggage tempo,
you get the idea. But the concept was good.

I also spent time with the Tilbrook
to my Difford,
the man currently known as duckmauler,
which is in deference to my old
stage name. We made another life-altering trip
together during Spring
Break 1986(7?)to Daytona Beach. We saw James
Brownon
stage and met Maceo
Parker
after the show. I remember we were talking,
and he's very
nice, and we're saying "Gad, you're Maceo Parker,
you've worked with Bootsy
Collins
you are like a god to us. When does James
get on the bus? We'd
like a picture." Maceo informed us that James
don't ride the bus,
he rides in a limo. We then asked where they
had been
recently.Maceo said they had been on "a big ass
tour of Europe.
Helsinki. You wanna party, you go to Hell-Sinki."

I
then started sharing a house with a guy
named Mike who made good money as a
mechanic (opposed to me who made dirt). He
really wanted to be a
musician, and he had this Casio keyboard with
"Superdrums" PCM rhythm. I
started using it with a Casio
SK-1 I'd bought for $100 at Walmart, my
bass, a guitar he bought,
and two cassette decks with a Radio Shack mixer to
help with some of
the dropoffs you'd get going generation of tape to
tape. I called it
"No-Fi" recording. I dubbed usMike and
the Moosecanics as Mike
and the Mechanics were actually popular
then. Working with this equipment alone, I thus I
give birth to the solo act I call Mooseboy Alfonzo
and His Prairie Troubadours.
During this time, I write and record some
memorable ditties, my
favorite being the classic "Tire Iron Love". In
those days, my writing
style was primarily "think of a really good song
title and then write a
song that goes with it". This ties, again, with my
"means to an end" approach
to songwriting. I also made another remake,
this time a polka
version of the Steppenwolf
classic "Born to be Wild".

But eventually, even that period of creativity
died, and I didn't write
music for a number of years. I did
write a song or two as part of a country-rock
outfit I was in, it wasn't until 2004 I came
back to it in earnest.

Foundations of the Instant Classic Opus Series

I'd
now
like to talk about some of the musical influences in
my life,
specifically those that relate to the Instant
Classic Opus series. I've
already established where my love for the classics
derives. When I
first entered college, I found some comfort from my
"it's all the
same" blues in the form of the group Yello.
Yello was decidedly
different. Their use of heavy vocal processing,
their often irreverent
subject material, Yello was making a big impression
on me around the
time I lost my virginity... Most folks know them as
the "Oh Yeah"
guys....

A
few
years later, the same thing happened to me whenBig
Audio
Dynamite came onto the scene. I was
always a huge Clash
fan,but this was so different from The
Clash. Don Letts
was doing something I'd been kicking around for a
little while - he was
playing audio clips as an instrument. Samples,
sampling keyboards, most
people tend to think in terms of "record a sitar,
then the keyboard can
sound like a sitar", or "I'll rip off James
Brown by
sampling his groove for my rap single". But B.A.D.
was taking clips
from stuff like "My
Favorite Year"or "The
Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"
and making them part of the song itself. In an era
of dreck like Will
toPower's "Freebaby", it was heady stuff
indeed.

The
final
piece of the puzzle comes in (for me) around 1998.
I'm in a used
book/tape/cd store and I come across a cassette from
Mel Tormé titledRight Now!(including
exclamation point). Recorded in the Mid-Sixties, Right Now!
was Mel's
attempt to modernize, get back in the swing of things by
recording
popular tracks of the day. But with that special Mel
Tormé
touch. Mel does versions of "If I Had a Hammer"
(and it's the
swingingest hammer you ever heard), Secret Agent Man
(what I still base
my SAM on whenever singing kareoke), and "Homeward
Bound". At the time,
I'm sure, no one cared at all. Today, however,
with a growing
nation of "Lounge" music fans, you start to see the
genius that was far
ahead of its time. His version of Donovan's
"Sunshine
Superman"(found on Rhino Records' Golden Throats
Vol. II)
put the final pieces in place for me. You can be lounge
and hip and
funny and cool and artistic at the same time.

Birth of the Instant
Classic Opus Series

So, one Saturday around the house, I decided to test
out this theory I
had. For some time I had been aware of this software
called Band-in-a-Box
that creates backing
tracks in various styles, based on the chords a person
types in. So you
plug in your I-IV-V progression, tell it it's a
Country Swing, and off
it goes. It also, I'd read, allows one to import
MIDI
files. So, I
theorized, I should be able to find a MIDI file of a
song on the
Internet, plug it into this software, change the style
to, say, a Jazz
quartet, and it'll play my song in a Lounge-y
style. 13 hours
later, you have "Get
the
Party Started"

As I've continued to record and refine my technique, I
find that my
work really reflects the three influences cited
above: the
playfulness and vocal stylings of Yello, the artistic
use of sampling
as an instrument of its own from Big Audio
Dynamite, and the
one-nation-under-Lounge style of Mel
Tormé during
the Mid/Late Sixties.

My technique and gear

I started initially just recording vocals using a decent
microphone into an IBM 300-GL computer I
bought on Ebay for $50. It had a Pentium III 600MHz
processor, buncha RAM and drive space shoved in, and a
cheesy Crystal
Semiconductor sound chipset on the
motherboard....starting with
cheesy MIDI files (here's the
source MIDI file I started with to make Bootylicious),
running it
through cheesy software, playing it through cheesy
hardware.

As my hobby continued, I found myself upgrading
everything - software, hardware, everything but talent
:-). Still, the more I've done, the better (I think)
I've got. I now try to use soft synths to sound more
semi-realistic, for example. My current gear includes a
Dell Inspiron 530, Windows 7, an E-MU
0404 PCIe sound card, a Behringer mixer, and assorted
microphones, keyboards, guitars, and basses. All
so I
can make a little bit of love, for kind folks such as
yourself.....

to

Yes, lovely, I understand there's an artistic
statement here?

Oh yes, I'm sure there is. First, I'm following a long
tradition of
going back to the days of RightNow!
and continued in recent years with the likes of Michael
Bublé (don't kid yourself, he's totally stealing
my bit), Richard
Cheese (COMPLETELY stealing my bit) and Paul
Anka's Rock Swings
(I hate you, Paul Anka, for stealing my bit and stealing
it so well). Secondly,
I find that my renditions give one a new way to approach
lyrics they
may have heard for years. In many cases, it may
even be the first
time one actually could understand those lyrics.... I
asked myself at
one point if this was all parody on my part. Am I just
making fun of
Billy Idol, Public Enemy, and the rest? I truly
believe not. I do
find some of these song to be "guilty pleasures" (I
wouldn't normally
admit to liking a song like Bootylicious), but I
genuinely like all of
these songs. And besides, I've been able to embed
more subtle
messages in there than you might think.... ;-)

It's great fun for me, and it doesn't seem to be hurting
anyone. You rare individuals who come across and
listen to my art,
I thank you all. Those that actually like it, I
thank you more.
Those that follow that up with praise in the form of
financial
compensation, I'm still waiting for you...